Couple of potentially interesting ethical ones for the panel.
First, self driving cars. A question on the internets is posed as follows:
You are in such a car, between two lorries on a mountain road, heading downhill steeply. The brakes fail on the lorry behind.
If the car stays where it is, it will be crushed between the two lorries, and you will die.
If the car veers left, it will go over the cliff edge and you will die.
If the car veers right it will hit a motorcyclist and he will die.
What should it do, and of course - who is liable? The software coders? The manufacturers? You?
Second example - given how ridiculously easy this new technology (or rather amalgamation of existing technology) makes it to kill someone from a huge distance with almost no effort, should sales be restricted/prohibited, or is this in fact just no more than another gun and nothing has changed for better or worse?
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UoMAiYnJOBM
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Hmm - rewatching the gun video, it's not made completely clear.
You point it at the target, pull the trigger - and nothing happens until the gun "knows" the target will be hit, taking into account myriad factors. So the gun is deciding when to fire, not you.
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either way the mountain road will be closed for 15 days while the police conduct forensic investigations and apportion blame.
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That slightly artificial example is one of thousands that render the 'autonomous passenger vehicle' less convincing to me than it seems to be to over-excited journalists and software wonks. They tell us these things will be available and affordable in ten or twelve years. My own view is that they never will be, and that the versions that do appear, as they will no doubt, will be a hell of a lot more trouble than they are worth.
The absurdly complicated enhanced scope sight is a thing for gadget freaks. It is already ridiculously easy to kill someone at a great distance using a proper scope on a .50 calibre sniper's rifle. You would only want this new device to show off to your idiot buddies.
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I don't see what the link is between the gun and the car.
The case for the car represnts no different a problem than if an all too fallible human were at the controls.
As for liability, again, no change, it's the operator and driver of the truck with the failed brakes who are to blame - anything that follows is consequential rather than causal.
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The ethics of technology - Crankcase
